You’ll have noticed I have a kind of love/hate relationship with fundraising, a relationship typified more by hate than by love on account of how I can’t fucking stand it. I can’t stand it on two counts: first, because I want you to give me your money without having to do anything for it; and second, because it brings out the inner twat in otherwise tedious people.

Ten years into fundraising I’ve run out of ideas. I ran out of ideas two years into fundraising, the last eight being a mash up of frustration, repetition and boredom. Quite why I have to entertain, amaze or otherwise dazzle people into giving me money when everyone knows the world is screwed in seventeen different directions is a mystery and injustice second only in size to the repeated casting of Madonna in otherwise professional feature films. I shouldn’t have to tap dance on an alligator’s left tit to remind you how people are starving in the world or promise you a nice day’s skydiving to get you off your arse. Fundraising should require nothing more than me standing in the street with a sandwich board saying “Seriously, though” and people dropping wads of cash into a skip in an acknowledgement of how other people need it more.

And then there’s the twat factor. Here we have Steve from Accounts getting his legs waxed because he’s ker-azy. Here we have Sandra from HR wearing deely boppers for 24 consecutive hours because she’s mad, her. Here we have Nicholas Witchell doing the can can for the 18th consecutive year because he’s Pudsey’s bitch. It’s why I was embarrassed by thoseruns the past couple of years in spite of the ten grand they brought in and it’s why I’m currently sick of testosterone-fuelled pube wranglers banging on about Movember. Even though I’m doing it, having caved in to what was a pretty minor bit of office-based peer pressure.

Movember, you’ll recall, is an annual fundraiser and awareness raiser for testicular and prostate cancer. It started in Australia in 2004 with a handful of men growing a few facefuls of moustaches to raise a few quid for men’s health charities. It’s absolutely raced away in the eight years since, hitting America, Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, Spain and the UK. Here we have a full on proper Butterfly, a small idea taking off and doing a substantial amount of goodery.

It’s a blokey bit of gimmickry that amounts to the facial hair equivalent of dick measuring, but it’s a necessary bit of gimmickry being as how men are often quite stupid about looking after their health, particularly if it’s in or around the toilet area. Movember is a big manly bit of manliness that gets in about the macho posturing that stops men getting checked. And they should get checked, on account of how many people are dying. NHS Choices reckons 36,000 men get hit with prostate cancer every year, accounting for a quarter of all male cancer diagnoses. 10,000 men die every year as a result. And yet, says the NHS, it can be cured if it’s caught and treated in the early stages. Likewise testicular cancer. It’s less common, with just over 2,000 diagnoses a year, but it too can be treated when caught early. And survival rates are way up there, kicking about the 95 percent area. The problem, of course, is that these particular cancers are not always caught early because they’re found in the balls and via the bumhole and some men aren’t up for doctors poking around their bits. That’s a shame because their embarrassment is killing them in a grotesque demonstration of Darwinian theory. That’s what Movember is looking to change.

In spite of my cynicism and other people’s twattishness it’s a cracking fundraiser, Movember’s official site reckoning it’s raised £184 million since its launch. The pace is gathering, with last year’s efforts accounting for near enough £80 million. Money raised in the UK goes to Prostate Cancer UK, the Institute for Cancer Research and awareness raising bits and pieces to get men to get themselves checked. And it’s a cracking awareness raiser. You’d be amazed these past few weeks how many conversations I’ve had with my coworkers about the quality and condition of their testicles. Way more than usual. Whether that translates to them going home and feeling up their balls for lumps is harder to say, even with the powerful zoom lens I have on my camera, but at least it’s being talked about. Movember’s the Chazza of the Month. You can donate right here and see about saving some of those 10,000 embarrassed Darwinites.

My benevolence, all towering and mighty and inspirational and that, is not only limited to my many acts of do-gooding on behalf of the poor, the disenfranchised and the dickheaded. I am also a great patron of the arts, a firm believer in the redemptive and transformational power of the legitimate theatre, the independent feature film, the Bananarama tribute act. Indeed, earlier this year I was one of several backers of a light operetta that played in our nation’s capital and required several thousand pounds to transfer to the Edinburgh stage. Naturally I reached for my cheque book and did what was required to let the piece be presented to the public, chipping in a fiver when I was tipsy.

On a recent trip to the theatre I happened upon a performance of Glasgow Girls, a musical that sheds no light whatsoever upon my otherwise uncompromised anonymity. It’s true this particular play on this particular occasion was called Glasgow Girls. And it’s true the venue at this time was actually in Glasgow itself. And it’s true a disproportionate number of my activities do seem to have taken place in and around the Glasgow area. But there was also that time I went to Nepal. Plus that time I blogged at an airport. I could be anywhere.

But I digress. The Glasgow Girls were a group of seven young women who went to Drumchapel High School, Drumchapel being to affluence and opportunity what Philip Schofield is to cool headed journalism. Naturally Drumchapel, being deprived and broken, was a dispersal point for asylum seekers, Drumchapel being to tolerance, sensitivity and race relations what Nigel Farage is to tolerance, sensitivity and race relations. I’m generalising, obviously, because the Glasgow Girls went to Drumchapel and they were awesome, but I’m scene setting here. So there were the Glasgow Girls, in Drumchapel in 2005, surrounded by need and deprivation and local politics to make your bumhole wince. They were awesome just hanging out, being as how three were from Scotland and four were asylum seekers from Kurdistan, Kosovo, Somalia and Poland and, more importantly, how some were from neighbouring Scotstoun where all kinds of Drumchapel/Scotstoun gang bollocks goes on. Their major awesomeness kicked in around the time trouble kicked off for Agnesa, a Roma gypsy from Kosovo. Agnesa, her two young brothers and her parents were subject to a dawn raid, 14 officials storming into their flat on a Sunday morning, restraining her mum and handcuffing her dad in a sensitive move felt to be entirely appropriate for a family with young children who had fled persecution and feared for their lives. They were taken to London, to Yarl’s Wood Detention Centre, surrounded by barbed wire and electric fences to keep us natives safe. Yarl’s Wood, you’ll recall, has had the odd scandal or two on account of its hunger strikes, allegations of staff racism and sexual harassment, and yer general imprisonment of innocent children and victims of torture.

The Glasgow Girls, being awesome enough and young enough to think if you want something to happen it will, roped in a teacher, got a petition going around the school and the neighbourhood, got a spot of community outrage started and off that got a stack of publicity in the Scottish press and on the telly. Under the scrutiny of the campaign it turned out the Home Office had gone against UN advice on not returning Roma Gypsies to Kosovo. Bit of a faux pas there. Agnesa and her family were released and returned to their home, their home being in Scotland. The Girls got to the Scottish parliament, took a shot at Scotland’s First Minister and he took a trip to Westminster to have a chat about this whole child detention/dawn raids thing. He died on his arse, obviously, but the Girls got high up quickly, winning Best Public Campaign at the Politician of the Year Awards as their campaign stormed along and saving a family from whatever horrors were waiting for them in Kosovo.

They had a cracking success but then they also saw another family taken and deported because the asylum process is still horrific and arbitrary and the kind of thing that, in the future, will make our descendents look back and think we were all a colossal bunch of arseholes.

Still, the Girls were awesome and they’re still campaigning. And while the play made a big deal of not having a happy ending because asylum law still honks up the place, it was an inspiring bit of stuff. In fact, so inspiring was it that Mrs Zero and meself turned activist at the intermission. Some drunk guy had been doing creepy panto laughing every time the cast sang about their trials and injustices. We went to the front desk, spoke to the authorities and had him forcibly removed which, now I think about it, is almost exactly the opposite of what the Glasgow Girls were all about. Shit. It’s dead tricky, this activism lark.

It feels like we’re about due an update on the No More Page 3 campaign. It’s been six weeks since I added my influential signature to the petition to rid The Sun of its tits and yet the quickest of flicks through the paper indicates up to ten nipples a week are still featuring prominently. Indeed, this week marked the beginning of 2012’s Page 3 Idol in which members of the public are invited to display their breasts in the hope of winning a grisly five grand and a shot at a long-term career in tit display. If ever there was any doubt that The Sun encourages its readers to judge women on the quality and condition of their breasts, here we have an competition in which its readers are actually encouraged to judge women on the quality and condition of their breasts.

You’ll recall we signed the petition on account of yer basic feminism, yer basic objectification of yer actual women. It boasted, back then, something in the area of 10,000 signatures. Since then it’s been in The Guardian, The Independent, The Guardian again, The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Telegraph, another bit of The Telegraph, The Telegraph again, some glossy magazines for the women, the trashier corners of the telly, a respectable bit of radio, and all over the blogosphere, picking up a fair bit of celebrity support along the way. Celebrity support’s apparently vital in any cause nowadays and while I weep for the continued shallowisation of the species I have to concede it has its uses, as the Great Danes at Burt Ward’s Great Dane sanctuary will tell you. They’d be out on the streets were it not for the intervention and awareness-raising of one of our most beloved former Robins. Chris O’Donnell, you’ll notice, has been notably silent on the issue of that particular breed of dogs and their particular assortment of problems. For shame.

But I digress. With these efforts combined the petition has hit more than 53,000 signatures. That’s an impressive chunk of people – enough, if laid end to end, to wrap your lower intestine three times around a double-decker football pitch. But the time for smugness is not yet upon us. First, there’s the question of size and scale. Even at 53,000 we’re still up against the millions of Sun readers who are firmly pro-boob, the millions more who aren’t interested and the handful of powerful people who’ll actually make the decision to get rid of the legendary newstits. And then there’s the question of momentum. The signatures built slowly to about 5,000 then raced away to 40,000 as the right-on publicity kicked in. But there appeared to be a slowing down as it approached 50,000, and there my knees began to wobble. There’s a chance we’re not far off saturation point. And here we’d hit the problem in the very bones of petitions: that a massive coming together of like-minded people can be dismissed as a minority interest dying on its arse, that 53,000 signatures is simultaneously awesome and a bit shit against the millions who haven’t bothered signing.

With that maybe in mind the organisers have opened up a second front, going after The Sun’s advertisers and threatening to boycott any company that goes within an inch of Rupert Murdoch’s exploitative lady lumps. There’s an amount of sense there. Back when your beloved Zero signed the petition I rambled something along the lines of how money’s the thing, how as long as The Sun is making money from other people’s nipples they’ll keep printing them, how the impact of keeping Page 3 has to be made worse than the impact of losing it because no one at The Sun gives a rat’s tit about gender politics. The boycott aims to do that, making The Sun toxic to its advertisers and hitting Murdoch in the only place he has any feeling left. In theory this looks to be a decent move. And yet my knees are still wobbling slightly.

Maybe it’s the maths. You’d assume only a share of the 53,000 would step up to the boycott, and the problem of numbers and impact gets bigger as the numbers and impact gets smaller. The demonstrations accompanying the boycott have drawn crowds so small the companies in question might reasonably have thought they were being picketed by the Jimmy Saville fan club. It feels like we’re in trouble here. And yet if the campaign dies on its arse now we’ll only have ourselves to blame for not getting sufficiently stuck in. Here I hold myself accountable. I, like you, didn’t join the boycott although I, unlike you, did mean to but sort of forgot about it. Bit embarrassing really, what with this being a do-gooding activist blog.

However, in spite of its modest size and the absence of you and I it seems to have done something. Following the boycott, the campaigners have been promised meetings with bigwigs from Tesco and Morrison’s to talk about the whole newstits situation. It’s entirely possible, of course, that this will amount to the responses they’ve already had from the likes of DFS and Lego, saying they appreciate them getting in touch but on this particular occasion they’re going to do bugger all about it. But it’s also possible, if the publicity holds and the stink of newstits honks the place up a bit, that this will shift things along a little. If The Sun can be made to look like the creepy little sod it is maybe people won’t want to play with it any more.

Meanwhile, my faith restored, I’m going to be re-impressed by 53,000 signatures, ram another reminder through my email, Twitter, Facebook and offline contacts, and write to my MP asking them to get stuck in. And I’m going to give optimism another bash. After all, great oaks from little acorns grow. Sometimes it’s best not to think about all the other acorns that just stay small and acorn sized.